Thomson: Measure of the man came after he left politics

Graham Thomson, Edmonton Journal09.14.2012

Former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed speaks to the media before a private dinner at the Hotel Macdonald on Aug. 30, 2011 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1971 election win of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.Rick MacWilliam
/ edmontonjournal.com

Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed chats with Kirsten Evenden, Pres. & CEO of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary during the opening night gala for the brand new Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, on Friday, January 29, 2010.John Lucas
/ edmontonjournal.com

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EDMONTON - The eulogies will say quite rightly Peter Lougheed was the most popular, the most powerful and the most influential premier in Alberta history.

But the measure of the man might just as arguably have come after he stepped down as premier of Alberta, when, as he said, he had to once again pump his own gas into his car rather than have a government driver do it for him.

This was a Lougheed freed from the burden of re-election and the tyranny of the public opinion poll. This was a Lougheed who supported a rise in royalty rates on oil companies and a slowdown on the exploitation of the oilsands, a Lougheed who wanted the province to save money for future generations. This was a Lougheed who defined what it was to be not merely a conservative but a Progressive Conservative — the Lougheed most Albertans alive today will remember.

His was always a voice of reason, one that did not stoop to disparage political opponents or fire cheap shots at the opposition.

Over time, that reason mellowed even more.

“In my judgment we should rebuild the Heritage Savings Trust Fund because I believe the whole concept of saving, particularly when you’re dealing with a resource that’s going to be depleting, is really sort of fundamental,” Lougheed the elder statesman told reporters in 2004, when the trust fund was being rapidly depleted. His argument went largely ignored, except for a token attempt to inflation-proof the trust fund.

Lougheed was alarmed by the pace of oilsands development and even more alarmed we weren’t saving money from the rapid expansion of the resource, something he had set out to do by establishing the trust fund in the first place 35 years ago. His plea was not an ego-driven call to protect his own legacy but a clear-headed call to action supported by economists, academics and every opposition party.

That was one of the curious features of Lougheed’s post-politics life: he at times started to sound more like an opposition leader than a government politician. This wasn’t so much because Lougheed was moving more to the left on the political spectrum but because the government was moving more to the right. And that bothered him deeply.

In 2006, he spoke out loudly against the rapid expansion of the oilsands. “The Alberta government has let the development get ahead of the infrastructure,” said Lougheed in a brutally frank interview with the Institute for Research on Public Policy. “When you have that happen, you are going to start to have to pay a price for it.”

Lougheed’s solution — “What is the hurry? Why not build one (oilsands) plant at a time? I hope the new government in Alberta will reassess this and come to the conclusion that the mess, and I call it a mess, that is Fort McMurray and the tarsands will be revisited.”

His advice went unheeded and we can see the consequences in the alleged downstream pollution from the oilsands, not to mention the environmental black eye suffered by the province on the international stage and even arguably the death toll on Highway 63.

In 2007, Lougheed supported then-premier Ed Stelmach’s controversial move to hike the amount of royalties paid by oil and gas companies to the public treasury, something that would not only bring in more money to the public purse but might slow the pace of development. “I’ve come to the conclusion that, on balance, it’s a very good decision,” said Lougheed, who understood first-hand the pressure Stelmach was under from the energy industry not to raise the royalties. Lougheed had come under identical pressure in 1972 when he increased taxes and faced a fierce barrage from industry, including the Canadian Petroleum Association, that said Lougheed’s tax hike was not “practical and equitable” and was “a serious breach of faith with the industry.”

At the time, Lougheed told irate oil executives, “What you don’t understand is you don’t own the resources” — a statement that at time seems to have been forgotten by the government of the day.

The only difference between Lougheed and Stelmach was Lougheed had luck on his side. Oil prices continued to rise in Lougheed’s time as premier while Stelmach faced an almost immediate international monetary crisis that drove down the price of oil and gas, and derailed his royalty rate increases.

Politicians today, particularly conservatives, are keen to embrace Lougheed as one of their own, as the prototype of today’s conservatism. But Lougheed was unique. To label him merely a conservative is not just a misnomer but an injustice. He believed in government intervention in the economy when necessary and he believed in spending money, lots of it, on schools and hospitals and government services. He may have fought against Ottawa to protect Alberta’s interests but those interests included buying Pacific Western Airlines. Compared to today’s knee-jerk conservatives who argue for ever-lower taxes and less government spending, Lougheed was a virtual socialist.

Lougheed was a complicated conservative. He was a Progressive Conservative and he seemed to become more progressive with age. His was a voice of reason. That voice has been stilled.

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